54 years old: Steem, ETH, BTC, and TSLA investor

Hi everyone!

I am a 54 year old widower; 2-time cancer survivor. Why this is relevant, I don't know, but this is the "introduce yourself" tag.

To be clear, I am not obsessed with money. I am obsessed with what money can buy: Time.

Cliches aside, money truly can buy time. Time to travel. Time to take care of your health. Time to gain more knowledge. Time to spend with family. Time to think. 

With fuck you money, suddenly you are no longer selling your time. Money allows you to not work, or at the least, choose what you want to work on. Money buys gardeners, mechanics, housekeepers, butchers, doctors, attorneys, accountants - you get the message. Money buys piece of mind by freeing your mind from trivial tasks.

I've been investing in real estate, stocks, businesses and technology for decades. Investing is about the future. Sometimes it is short-term, other times it's longer time horizons. Regardless, successful investing is about the future. And, looking back in the past, I've done a good job investing in the future.

I  have an ability to spot trends and revolutionary society shifts early. I suppose you might think of me as an amateur futurist. I was unable to take financial advantage of the very early beginnings of the internet (I was on the internet before the World Wide Web - that makes me old), but I did do very well during the dot-com run-up in the early 2000s. The heady dot-com days taught me not only how to risk large (for me) sums of money, but also how to believe in yourself, and conventional wisdom is frequently wrong.

(Damn, this all sounds so arrogant! My apologies, but bear with me.)

So, I've embarrassingly introduced myself, but perhaps this will give you, the reader, a background of my life and why I see the things I do, and why I am living my life to gather more time. 

Cryptocurrency Future

The past 6 or 7 years, I have been investing in crypto coins, namely BTC, but I also invested in the genesis round of Ethereum. I am buying Steem now. Let's go through these.

Bitcoin has first-mover advantage, like eBay, amazon and others that simply were very early and quickly overtook and destroyed their competitors. It will be here to stay. Although some exciting things are being done with bitcoin blockchain technology outside of the cryptocurrency, it's primary existence, IMHO, will be due to it's einherent value as a commodity/currency. Most altcoins will depend on - and price fluctuate - with bitcoin.

Ethereum is a different animal. It is a Turing-complete world-wide computing network based upon blockchain technology. It has should have the benefit from learning from bitcoin's shortcomings, but it is very young with much more complexity, so it is blazing it own trail. The DAO debacle certainly illustrates the unmapped territory, but I believe that the technology and the currency can weather the hard fork and it's implications IF safeguards, systems and policies are created for future issues. Risk is high, but I think the reward is even higher. Microsoft reiterated their support for the product recently, btw.

Now we come to Steem. And Steem Dollars. And Steem Power. I admit I am still understanding the interrelationships between the publishing/curation platform and the blockchain technology, but it is growing at an incredible pace, so I shifted a few bitcoin into Power and Steem. This time it appears that a platform has been created that requires it's own currency to compensate its users. Just that in itself is fascinating, because I have owned an online journalism site in the past, and comments, advertising, and maintaining quality editorial content is challenging to say the least. No one has figured out how to scale profitability in that business. The old saying "you know how to make a small fortune in online journalism? Start with a large fortune." Sorry Jeff.

I've often thought of some sort of micropayment system that could do away with many of these problems. I've also pondered if an independent publishing site can be built upon the Steem platform, with it's own editors, genre, etc. If someone wants to flesh this idea out more, or to tell me I am full of shit, let me know. I still like journalism, but have yet to find a profitable way to do it. Steem looks like it might be it.

The Planet's Future.

Besides crypto currency, I think sustainable energy is not only a moral necessity to save humanity, but it also presents very big opportunities for those that can see the paradigm shifts. One way I take advantage of this is investing in Tesla. Few will disagree that Elon Musk is a visionary. Many people think of Tesla as an automobile manufacturer. Try this instead: think of Tesla as a power pack company. To wean off of carbon-emissions, cars need to be electric, and they need power packs. To make electricity carbon-neutral it needs to be generated by something other than coal or gas. This means Tesla's acquisition of SolarCity makes sense. Solar power requires storage because it doesn't generate power in rain or at night. They need Tesla power packs. At the last Tesla's shareholder's meeting, Elon mused that power would make up at least of 50% of Tesla's revenue in the future, and that was before the SolarCity acquisition proposal was public. 

I also think that Elon's plans to re-invent the "machines that make the machines" will revolutionize not only Tesla, but all manufacturing; something akin to a second industrial revolution.

A manufacturing revolution that accelerates humanity's progress in a carbon-neutral way, coupled with crypto-driven disintermediation platforms will truly drive a revolution in all of our lives.

Humanity's Future

There are efforts to put a virtual country on the blockchain. Imagine if this virtual country were to be approved as an "official" country with it's own recognized citizenship that is not defined by geographical imaginary lines drawn on the earth. The citizens all belong to a governing body with everyone sharing the same ideals, without regard to petty, tribal issues and complete autonomy throughout the world. Couple this with frictionless, stateless currencies and suddenly the idea is very viable. Imagine this along with a genuine change in humankind's greatest threat of global warming, and suddenly everyone horizons change.

It's not all kumbaya and s'mores to be sure, but these times, they are a changing'!

Buying Time on the Steemit Platform

So for me, investing my time and money into this platform is perfect for finding like-minded individuals that want to share ideas, not discuss people or events. All of us early Steemers are dreamers, seekers and idealists. I welcome the thought exchanges.